


Agatha Heterodyne and the Spirit of Christmas

by Sturzkampf



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Christmas, Gen, Inspired by A Christmas Carol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-30
Updated: 2014-11-30
Packaged: 2018-02-27 13:41:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2695109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sturzkampf/pseuds/Sturzkampf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agatha Heterodyne devises a complicated plan to bring joy to the heart of the one man in Mechanicsburg who hates Christmas. Surprisingly, things do not work out exactly as she intended.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Agatha Heterodyne and the Spirit of Christmas

_Set around the time of 'The Electric Coffin', when Agatha is finally establised in Mechanicsburg as the Heterodyne and hardly anyone is trying to kill her on a daily basis._

_Warning: May contain traces of sentimentality. Well, it is a Christmas story..._

Opening a Christmas present from Agatha Heterodyne is always exciting, but not necessarily in a good way. Admittedly, Agatha expends a lot of thought and effort creating presents for her friends and a unique hand-made gift from The Heterodyne has great prestige and intrinsic worth. However, the recipients have learnt from experience that it is always prudent to open their presents with the same care and attention to detail they would give to defusing an unexploded bomb until they know exactly what they are dealing with.

On this particular Christmas Morning, Agatha was walking through the snowy streets of Mechanicsburg in a wonderful mood. That night she had delivered her most elaborate Christmas present yet to the most unpopular man in Mechanicsburg and she was eager to see the result. Mr Steuermann was the one man in the city who hated Christmas and didn't care who knew he regarded the whole thing as complete humbug. Everyone regarded him as a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner. While the town celebrated he would be alone in his cheap and dilapidated rented rooms, huddled over a tiny fire eating a frugal meal, sneering at the wanton excess of the celebrations around him.

There was another factor that made Mr Steuermann the most unpopular man in Mechanicsburg. He was a financier, not a mechanic. He dealt purely with money. He didn't actually make, maintain, repair or sell anything. He never got his hands dirty and in Mechanicsburg that put him on a par with paedophiles and tailgaters. He ran his finance business from mean, cold, drafty and poorly-maintained offices, where his long-suffering clerks worked long hours for low pay, endlessly calculating the interest due from most of the workshops, foundries and factories that made up the industry of Mechanicsburg. For Mr Steuermann had his claws into the industry of Mechanicsburg, with money lent to all the small enterprises. He looked over their shoulder, insisting on receiving every penny owed to him while threatening to bankrupt any business that was slow to repay, and they hated him for it.

Steurermann's chief clerk was a small, rather pale man called Bob Crotchett. Unlike his employer he was friendly, affable and good humoured. Rather than live in misanthropic solitude, he was happily married with a large family and never let the financial strains of providing for his wife and four children or the fact that one of them was crippled dent his unflagging optimism and good cheer. His bad treatment by Mr Steuermann only increased the general hostility towards his employer.

Whenever she went in Mechanicsburg, Agatha heard bad things about Mr Steuermann. On the few occasions she had met him, he had shown all the respect due to the Heterodyne, but there was a reserve, a hostility about him that Agatha had never met before in a citizen of Mechanicsburg. At first she had planned to bring him to the Castle and remonstrate with him about his behaviour, possibly with the aid of some of the more boisterous Jägerkin, the Castle’s more amusing mechanisms and a number 16 socket wrench, but when it came down to it, there was nothing that he had ever done wrong. He had broken no laws, no-one forced the workshops of Mechanicsburg to go to him for money and despite his repeated threats he had never actually turned an artisan and his family out onto street. Instead she had come up with her great idea to reform his character and make him appreciate the true Spirit of Christmas.

Even for a Spark, it had been an elaborate and, let’s face it, completely insane plan. It had grown from its simple beginnings of projecting images of a few of the influential characters from Steuermann’s life to make him see the error of his ways into a full scale tableau featuring scenes from his past, to remind him of happier times, the present, to show him how he was regarded by the other inhabitants of Mechanicsburg, and a projected bleak future, to show him the ultimate consequences of his behaviour. As the plan grew, more and more of the Castle staff became involved, making discrete enquiries about his past life, taking covert three dimensional images of his current associates and creating some imaginative scenes for the future tableau. The minions were kept busy creating portable versions of the Heterodyne projectors to render the illusions as well as a variety of clanks that acted as both extras and scenery. Actors sworn to secrecy were employed to provide the voices and Agatha even made two risky trips to Britain to get advice on staging large scale spectacles from Master Payne and his troupe in the Circus of Adventure. Professor Moonsock's ballet-dancing mimmoths had been a particular triumph.

It had all finally come together on the night of Christmas Eve after Mr Steuermann had retired to his mean chambers. In a carefully choreographed operation the entire paraphernalia had descended around his house, lowered from silenced airships, and the show, long rehearsed, had been played out before his eyes as though presented by the ghosts of Christmases past, present and future. The combination of recorded images, projections of live actors to allow direct interaction and the fully immersive projected environment had all gone off without a hitch, but when the show was written and directed by Agatha Heterodyne, did you really expect anything else? It was a very special present designed to put joy back into the heart of the only unhappy man in Mechanicsburg that one fine Christmas morning.

As Agatha rounded the corner of his house, she half expected to meet an invigorated and renewed Mr Steuermann striding down the street wishing everyone a cheery Happy Christmas, making large donations to the Mechanicsburg orphans’ fund and buying one of the enormous family-sized eight-legged Mechanicsburg turkeys for Bob Crotchett and his family. Instead she was disappointed to find his house shut up and no sound from within. Oh well, she thought, perhaps he is already out spreading good cheer with his nephew and his family. But no, a meagre light was shining from the behind the murky windows and a thin stream of smoke curled from the chimney. Agatha went up to the door and knocked, but jumped back with a surprised squeak when the knocker momentarily turned into the face of a leering Jägerkin. She had forgotten about the amusing mechanism she had rigged up there to give Mr Steuermann a little warm up act as he arrived home the previous evening. The metallic clatter of the knocker echoed through the house. Just when Agatha had decided no one was home after all she heard a soft shuffling approaching. The door opened to reveal Mr Steuermann, still wearing this nightcap, with a grey threadbare dressing gown over his worn clothes. On his feet he wore balding furry slippers. He looked old and tired, older than the last time Agatha had seen him. Red rimmed and rheumy eyes peering out from behind his glasses. When he saw Agatha he gave a perfunctory bow, but his voice showed no respect for The Heterodyne.

“Oh it’s you. I wondered if you might be paying a visit. Thought that little farce last night had all the hallmarks of your Spark.”. There was an awkward pause. “I suppose you’ll want to come in?” he continued without enthusiasm. He stood aside to let her enter and closed the door hurriedly behind her, almost as though he was afraid of what else might be out there. Together they walked through the bleak house along the worn out carpet into the single living room. The tiny fire burning in the hearth gave out almost no heat. Agatha had felt warmer outside, and she could feel the numbing and paralysing cold pressing in on her, squeezing her like a vice, trying to seep its way in through the seams of her clothing and suck the heat from the body. The few pieces of furniture were in bad repair and many had mould growing on them. The room smelt of damp. Steuermann sat down in a chair and huddled over the fire, pulling a blanket around his shoulders for warmth. Agatha took the other chair, too far away from the fire for any heat to reach it. Her host remembered his manners enough to offer her tea, made from a kettle warming by the fire. It was weak, lukewarm and the milk was off. Having met his obligations to his guest, Steuermann huddled into his chair and glared at Agatha, obviously feeling no need to indulge in conversation. He did not look at all reformed, invigorated or happy. In the end Agatha felt she had to speak, just to break the hostile silence.

“So..er.. you saw the.. um.. little diversion we arranged for you last night?” she began uncertainly.

“You know that I did.” growled Steuermann.

“And you didn’t find it uplifting to be reminded of yourself in younger times when you were happy? It didn’t bother you to see how you are perceived by the people of Mechanicsburg? You didn’t feel anguish to see yourself buried unloved and alone in a pauper’s grave with scavengers stealing your few possessions? You didn’t wish you could share the happiness of Crotchett and his family at their Christmas celebrations? Didn’t it break your heart to see the abandoned crutch and the empty place at their table in the future Christmas?”

Steuermann scowled. “No, not really. I knew all that already.”

Agatha gaped. “What is wrong with you. Do you have no heart? No soul?”

“No.” he snarled. “Compassion and self-pity and a heart and a soul are luxuries that I cannot afford. Luxuries that I cannot afford to allow myself. Why should I care what happens to my body or my possessions after I am dead? What is happiness to me so long as my business remains in profit? What do I care what the townsfolk think of me? If I can continue to help them, what do I care if they hate me? I do what needs to be done for Mechanicsburg because no-one else will do it, not because I expect any thanks.”

“Thanks?” Agatha was astonished and outraged. She rose from her chair and stood over Steuermann “You expect people to thank a skinflint like you? What about Crotchett and his impoverished family? Do you expect them to thank you for what you do for them you horrible penny-pinching miser?”

Steuermann was stung by Agatha’s outburst.

“Why should Crotchett and his family be my responsibility?” he sneered. “When I was a young man I had to make the same decision that he did. I was in love with a girl too, but I realised that I would not be able to support her, and if we had a family it would make things even worse. So we parted company. It broke my heart but I couldn't condemn her to a life of poverty. Now Crotchett, he has made the other choice. He married the girl he loved and has had a large family, even though he struggles to support them, especially now one is ill. Perhaps you will tell me that he made the right choice, happiness rather than security. You may be right. There is not one day that goes by when I don't think of my lost love and the pain is as keen as the day I said goodbye. But now you stand there and tell me that it is my responsibility, because I chose not to condemn the woman I loved to penury and hardship, to look after the man who made the selfish choice?”

“And you call me miser, skinflint, penny-pincher? Do you know how the small the difference is between the continued operation of Mechanicsburg and total financial disaster? My business provides the credit and the capital that keeps almost all the workshops and foundries in your precious town running. Even an extra bucket of coal on my fire can mean the difference between providing the money for another workshop’s continued operation and its failure. And yet when I go to them to collect what is due, the return on my investment, they use every excuse and threat to delay and dodge, while they waste the good money I have provided on roaring fires and parties and.. and Christmas. And then they ask why I should benefit from their hard work, when it is only through my hard work and constant financial prudence that I was able to provide them with the capital they needed to buy their tools and their machines to start their business in the first place. And if my business fails, then where will your precious Mr Crotchett and all my other clerks get their money for food and rent, answer me that?”

He stood up to face Agatha:

“Without me and the service I provide, your town would rapidly cease to operate, unless you are willing to start paying for things yourself with all your fabulous treasure. No – don't even think about it. Merely putting money into the system would just make everything more expensive and make things even worse. You think of nothing but your machines.” His voice rose as he became more incensed. “You all know nothing of the finance and money systems that provide the food, the labour, that manages the raw materials, or the knife edge on which they operate. Without the provision of capital your entire system would collapse within a week and yet when I ask for what is due to me so I can pay my staff and buy food and coal for my fire you call me mean, greedy, skinflint and taunt me with this mad-boy nonsense!” His voice rose to a shout. “WHO IN HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE!?”

“WHO AM I?” roared Agatha standing nose to nose. “I AM THE HETERODYNE!”. There were two seconds of silence while the two glared at each other. Then Steuermann dropped to one knee, his eyes averted.

“Forgive me Mistress.”

Agatha took a deep breath, forcing herself to control her anger. This conversation was not going as she had intended.

“Oh, get up.” As Steuermann stood up, Agatha was mortified to see the mixture of fear and resentment in his glare. She tried to ease the tension.

“What happened to your, er, young lady?”

“She married a better man than me. Six inches taller and 20 kilos heavier, the extra mass made entirely of muscle. A member of the castle staff, able to give her what she deserved.”

“And do you still keep in touch?”

“Oh, she died. She was killed by a Jäger.”

“A _Jäger_?”

“She said no.” He shrugged, “ This was in the days of the old Masters. Things were different then.”

“Oh, I - I'm sorry.” For no logical reason, Agatha felt guilty. She regarded the Jägerkin as her friends and wondered if the Jäger was anyone she knew. It was easy to forget the reality of the old Heterodynes and the creatures they had created to serve them.

“Please. Go. Just go.” Steuermann sat down in the tattered arm chair and stared into the tiny coal fire, lost in memories of the past, stirred into fresh bitterness by Agatha's Christmas present. He seemed to have forgotten she was still in the room. As she turned to leave she heard him sobbing softly.

When Agatha opened the front door and stepped into the street a stone whizzed past her head, followed by childish jeers and catcalls. A crowd of Mechanicsburg urchins had gathered around the door to play ‘Taunt the Miser’. Suddenly Agatha was a chubby little girl again, the butt of jokes of the older children, trying to goad her into losing her temper, hopefully followed by one of her famous screaming fits as her anger triggered a headache; always good for brightening up an otherwise dull afternoon. The childhood flashback lasted for the three seconds it took the children to realise that they were not teasing a horrible old man, but Lady Heterodyne herself. With shrill cries of terror they ran for it. Agatha found the experience extremely cathartic and wondered if it might be worth looking up some of her old childhood acquaintances. The train of thought led her back to another Christmas in Beetleburg, many years before.

She had just opened her Christmas present, a wonderful toy that Adam had made for her; a wooden cube with each face divided into 9 squares of one of six different colours. By a clever mechanism that had utterly fascinated the ten-year old Agatha, each face could be moved independently to shuffle the coloured squares. Lilith explained that the idea of the puzzle was to move the squares so that each face was composed of nine squares of the same colour, with each of the six faces a different colour. It was definitely possible because that was the way it had been made. Adam had moved a few of the faces to make sure the mechanism worked and had then spent the last 8 nights trying to get the coloured faces to match again, but had just got more and more confused.

Agatha was delighted. As soon as she saw the puzzle she began to see the combinations of movements that would be needed to solve it. But with a terrible inevitability once she began to manipulate the cube her thoughts became muddled and the beautiful patterns in her mind shattered. An hour later she was becoming increasingly frustrated as the combinations she could imagine refused to translate into reality. The inevitable headache hit like a hammer. Agatha tried to fight through it, but the more she tried to concentrate the more the monster in her head taunted her. Finally she burst into tears and in frustration threw the cube across the room where it shattered against the wall. Lilith rushed in from the kitchen and swept the distraught child into her arms. Agatha hung onto her and sobbed uncontrollably. Cried because of the anger, cried because of the pain, cried because she had broken her wonderful new toy, cried because she needed to release all the distress and be hugged and be comforted:

“Hush, Agatha, hush.” whispered Lilith. “No-one should cry on Christmas Day.”

With hindsight, Agatha could hear the guilt mixed with the compassion. Lilith held her for a long time, until the pain and the sobbing subsided and the little girl slept, safe in her mother's arms. Agatha had awoken in her own bed, the headache gone. On the desk in her attic room stood the wooden cube, carefully mended, with each face now the same colour.

In the streets of Mechanicsburg, Agatha turned back to the cold house and the door, still ajar, where Steuermann sat weeping at the painful memories and current reality brought to vivid life by her Christmas present. A new idea began to form. From a pocket of her dress she extracted one of her little clanks and wound it up. The device clicked and came to life, looking up at its Mistress like an expectant puppy, eager to please.

“Here, fly to Castle Heterodyne at once and tell them to send transport for me and one guest at this place” she told it. The propeller on top of the little clank spun up to speed and it soared up into the sky, climbing to the Castle looming above the city. With a new resolve she strode back into the house.

Steuermann was still sitting in the armchair, staring into the fire. He gave no indication that it he was aware of Agatha coming back into the room. He jumped at her shout.

“Mr Steuermann! Show me your books! Now!”

The old man stood up as though awakening from a dream.

“My books?”

“Yes, show me your books! I know you keep copies here! If you are funding the city, I want to see!”

Soon, Agatha was surrounded by ledgers, account statements and scribbled notes.

“But this is brilliant. You are providing all the credit Mechanicsburg needs to operate. But why are your margins so low? With this amount of capital flowing through the business you should be rolling in money.”

“If I took any more back then half the businesses in Mechanicsburg would be broke within a week.”

Agatha referred back to her notes. “But look. This workshop is consistently late with payments and makes no attempt to meet its commitments. But here you are lending them more money. Why?”

Steuermann shrugged. “Well, they said that owing to cash flow problems due to ..er.. the fact that they had not been paid by you ..er.. the Castle for work done, they needed the additional money otherwise they would have to start laying off workers. I had some money set aside to by coal for the winter that I was able to divert to keep them running. I was hoping I could replace it with some money due from Big Boilers International but they’ve had bad sales apparently, so they’ve asked for a deferment until the spring. Still, they say that keeping your room too warm is bad for your health.”

Agatha snorted. “That is complete boll.. I mean that is not true at all.”, I know that we have paid this workshop in full on time and I saw the managing director’s wife walking around in a new tiger-skin coat last week. And as for Big Boilers, well, I have had them working flat out for the last six months and taken everything they can make. And they are renowned for their lavish Christmas parties. They’ve been banned from the venue they’ve hired for the last three years running. Not even the Jägers have managed that. They must have plenty of cash. How can they not afford to pay what they owe you? Don’t you ever check their books?”

Steuermann emitted a strange gurgling sound. At first Agatha thought he might be choking or having a fit, but then she realised he has laughing. It was something he had almost forgotten how to do.

“You think one of the great engineers of Mechanicsburg, or even an independent workshop owner, would let me look at their books? I’m lucky if I don’t get threatened by violence if I so much as step onto the premises!”

“So, why do you do it?” Agatha asked. “Go to all this trouble for no reward and perpetual abuse?”

Steuermann drew himself up with unconscious pride “Because I was born in Mechanicsburg and I serve the Heterodyne. What is it your minions sing? 'We shall slave to keep our beautiful city alive'. Someone’s got to keep the town’s finances running. If not me, then who?”

“Us.” exclaimed Agatha. “This is intolerable. We can’t have people taking advantage of your good nature and bullying you like this. Your problem is that you are just too easy going.”

Steuermann looked at her in disbelief. “Good natured? Easy going? Me? You really _are_ insane, aren’t you?”

Agatha ignored him. “They can't expect you to fund them. The first thing we’ll do is get your clerks to make a list of all the companies that are behind with payments. Looks like that’s just about all of them. Then we’ll pay a visit to each of their premises and look at their accounts. We’ll see who really can't pay and who’s spending the money that they owe you on expensive pieces of dead animal.”

“And in return they will call you a skintflint. Grasping, clutching, covetous...”

“You will be surprised how polite and accommodating people can be when you are accompanied by a squad of Jägers. And just to emphasise that you now have the full approval of The Heterodyne, you and your clerks will move from your decrepit offices and come and work in the Castle, where the heating is free and you can all eat a proper square meal in our subsidised canteen.”

She saw the look of horror on Steuermann’s face. “Oh don’t worry, Castle Heterodyne isn’t half as bad as you’ve heard. Well, not once it gets to know you. Probably. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. Really. Maybe we could get Crotchett’s son in and have a look at that leg. Castle staff and their families are entitled to free health care you know. I'm sure I could fix it; or even make improvements!”

Outside in the street there was a metallic clattering and a hiss of steam. With a whir the little clank flew into the room to announce that transport to the Castle had arrived.

Agatha turned to the old man. “Look Mr Steuermann, I really can’t apologise enough for the pain I must have caused you last night. I am, so, so, sorry. I hope you will forgive me. To try and put things right, please, come and be my guest at Castle Heterodyne for Christmas dinner. Our carriage awaits.” Mr Steuermann obediently followed Agatha out of the house with the glazed look of a man whose world has just been turned upside down, forgetting even to put on his outdoor boots and coat or take off his night cap. Lady Heterodyne often has that effect on people.

They walked out into the street together, to where Agatha’s horseless carriage was waiting, impatiently stamping its iron hooves on the snowy cobblestones. Agatha took Steuermann's arm to show the incredulous onlookers that he was indeed an honoured guest and had the full support of The Heterodyne. He flinched at the unaccustomed contact. It had been over forty years since a woman had touched him, and that had been when his fiancée had knocked out his left upper canine with a fine right hook the night he broke off their engagement.

Agatha opened the carriage door for him. “Now, to Castle Heterodyne and a proper meal and a proper fire. Then we discuss our plan of campaign to get the money owed to you by the greedy, grasping engineers of Mechanicsburg! God damn 'em, one and all!”


End file.
